


Things We Can't Untie

by the_storm_winds



Category: Transformers: Prime
Genre: Angst, Breakup, M/M, Mutual Pining, Sticky Sexual Interfacing, The Matrix is a jerk, canon character death, star crossed lovers, starts fluffy but quickly turns sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-13
Updated: 2018-08-13
Packaged: 2019-06-26 14:43:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15665286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_storm_winds/pseuds/the_storm_winds
Summary: Slowly, Optimus shook his helm, pulling his servo out of his grip. “That will not be enough. I cannot afford to be a normal mech.” He caught his gaze and held it, and Ratchet saw a sadness hidden deep in his optics. “I cannot have weaknesses, Ratchet.”The Matrix requires a mech who will be impartial—one who will make choices for the benefit of all Cybertronians, no matter the personal cost.Ratchet hates it.





	Things We Can't Untie

**Author's Note:**

> 100% inspired by "[Hey, That's No Way To Say Goodbye](https://youtu.be/b-bJPmasXKs)" by Leonard Cohen.

_I loved you in the morning, our kisses deep and warm._

* * *

Pale rays of early morning sunlight streamed in through the window of Ratchet's apartment, slowly warming his faceplate and stirring him awake. He onlined his optics, cycling them until they adjusted to the new brightness.

He looked over at the mech beside him. He was lying on his back, staring up at the ceiling.

“Optimus?” He rolled over to face him. “How long have you been online?”

Optimus turned his helm towards him. “Ratchet, I…” The words caught, and something in his expression sent a pang through Ratchet's spark.

He shifted closer and propped himself up on his servos, looking down at him. “What's wrong?” He reached out with his field, brushing gentle concern over his frame.

Instead of answering, Optimus brought a servo up and drew him down into a kiss. Ratchet settled over him, cupping the side of his helm and stroking the curve of his audial.

Optimus parted his lips, drawing him in deep, and Ratchet lost himself in the silvery sweetness as their glossae slipped past each other, pressing and exploring the familiar territory. Optimus moved with a rare hunger that soon had him intoxicated. He was only too willing to give all of himself to satisfy that; there was nothing in the world he'd like more. For this mech… this mech he loved…

The affection bled into his field and Optimus gripped at him, making a soft helpless noise into the kiss. Ratchet ran his servos across his frame in gentle caresses, trying to assure him that, whatever troubled him, he was here at his side and nothing could take him away.

Prickles of tickling charge flitted across their plating where they touched, and their movements grew more passionate, the two filling the room with soft pleasured moans.

Optimus clung to his frame like a lifeline as Ratchet entered him, the note that spilled from his vocalizer low and deep. Ratchet feathered kisses over his windshield glass, and his servos drifted down his sides to his hips, stroking around the bases of his sensitive blue fairings. They rocked together, vents flaring open to pour the heat from their frames.

He found the spot inside Optimus that had him arching against him, lips parted and helm thrown back as his field bloomed bright with pleasure. Ratchet shuddered through his release a moment later, and Optimus shivered with a soft moan as he filled him.

Ratchet shifted afterwards to lie over him, resting his helm on his chest and relaxing into the soft vibration of his lover's engines as they vented heavily in the warm tingle of afterglow. A gentle servo stroked his back, rubbing lazy circles until Ratchet let out a helpless sigh of pleasure.

Optimus rumbled softly, and Ratchet shivered at the affection that washed through his field. He pulled himself forward until he was high enough to press a warm, slow kiss to his lips. Optimus cradled his helm, returning it with a depth and passion that had Ratchet wondering if he wanted a second round. His systems warmed; they didn't have anywhere urgent to be and he wouldn't object to the idea in the slightest.

Something else flickered through Optimus's field and he stiffened beneath Ratchet, a wave of guilt settling over him like a great black cloud.

“Optimus?” Ratchet pulled back from the kiss. “What's wrong?”

“I…” He shuttered his optics, expression pained. “I can't… We can't keep doing this.”

“What do you…” he trailed off, worry growing in his spark.

Optimus looked at him again, lips parting as longing threaded through his field. Then he tore his gaze away. “This. Our… our relationship.” His field went taught as he clamped down on the emotion in it.

“What? Optimus, we've been over this. Frag what the council thinks. You being Prime doesn't mean they own you.”

“It's… not only the council.” He brought a servo up between them, brushing his digits over his chestplates.

“The Matrix?” Ratchet gaped. He sat up, still straddling Optimus. “But that's… Why?”

Optimus shifted onto his elbows, and Ratchet climbed off him so he could sit up.

“They don't approve of me—” Optimus turned his helm away, shuttering his optics “—indulging in overly close personal attachments, which could impair the objectivity of my judgement and endanger the future of Cybertron.”

“Wh—” Ratchet stared, dumbfounded. What _right_ did they think they had… “That's ridiculous,” he scoffed. “These… these _voices_ or whatever that you hear through it… They expect you to be—what, a _drone?”_

“I have duties, Ratchet.”

“And you can do them! You can be the leader Cybertron needs without abandoning every semblance of a personal life. And sometimes you'll be busy, or have to go elsewhere; I understand that.” He took one of Optimus's servos between his own, squeezing it as he looked up at him with earnestness. “I'm not the most patient of mechs, but I can wait for you, Optimus.”

Slowly, Optimus shook his helm, pulling his servo out of his grip. “That will not be enough. I cannot afford to be a normal mech.” He caught his gaze and held it, and Ratchet saw a sadness hidden deep in his optics. “I cannot have weaknesses, Ratchet.”

Ratchet stared back at him in wide-opticked silence, lips parted but words no longer coming to him. He wanted to say _slag them for saying such things,_ but this was the _Matrix of Leadership._ Even he had to admit its power fell into the realm of the mystical—sacred, even—and Optimus would always do what he felt was right, no matter the cost to himself.

“Must you?” he asked instead, voice coming out as a whisper.

“I must.”

He shuttered his optics, feeling suddenly dizzy. This… This wasn't happening.

“It hurts me sometimes,” Optimus admitted, and Ratchet opened his optics. Optimus wouldn't meet his gaze. “The Matrix. Especially when I resist them. It… burns.”

For a moment Ratchet could only stare. “It does _what?_ ” he demanded, aghast. “ You've done nothing but your best for this… these… these _Primes,_ and they have the _audacity_ to…” He clenched his servos as his anger flared up. “A load of _slag_ is what that is.”

Optimus still refused to look at him. “Not always. They have been prompting me to leave you for a long time.”

Ratchet clenched his servos even tighter, until yellow stress warnings began to pop up on his HUD. His frame shook. _Frag the Matrix, and the Primacy, and these so-called “Thirteen”… Frag them all to the Pit._

Optimus touched the side his helm, and the tension melted from him instantly.

“I'm sorry, Ratchet.” Optimus leaned in and kissed him, just a light, gentle press of lips. Ratchet started to reach for him, but he caught his servo halfway, returning it to his lap. “I will miss you, old friend,” Optimus exvented more than spoke, the soft puff of air brushing Ratchet like a last, final kiss before he slid off the berth and turned away.

Ratchet could do nothing but watch him go, his spark shattering like glass.

 

* * *

 

Ratchet sat atop the grounded _Arc_ , nursing a cube of energon and watching the purple hued binary sunset of the barren metallic planet they'd landed upon.

Slow heavy footsteps approached from behind him. “I am glad to see you taking a break, old friend.”

Ratchet huffed. “First Aid threatened to override my authority as CMO under grounds of starvation stress.”

“Sounds like you've trained him well,” Optimus said, optics twinkling in amusement as he came to sit beside him. He brought out a cube of energon as well and sipped from it, turning his gaze towards the sight before them.

They sat in silence as the light changed, each basking in the quiet warmth of the other's presence. It was tempting, at times like this, to forget their boundaries and shift closer, to lean against his former lover. He could easily slip into recharge that way, lulled by soft vibration of his engine. Then to online tangled up with him, as they had so long ago…

He finished his cube and set it aside, somewhat self-consciously. Optimus was watching him, and the softness in his optics made Ratchet's spark leap in his chest. He pulled his field in tight, trying to dismiss the thoughts from his processor. It was dangerous to entertain these concepts, especially with him so close.

His servo brushed Optimus's as he shifted positions, and his control over his field slipped. He heard a sudden intake from beside him and made the mistake of glancing towards Optimus.

Ratchet's vents stalled as their gazes met. Something warm and deep and achingly vulnerable burned in Optimus's optics, an irresistible draw that he struggled to remember why he'd been trying to avoid. His spark pulsed a wanton cry, field reaching back out for Optimus's before he could stop it, and all the walls that usually kept the distance between them turned to dust.

Optimus leaned closer.

Ratchet shuttered his optics, leaning in towards him.

Reminders—warnings—spiraled in the back of his processor, but the buzz of his spark was far too loud in his audials for him to hear what they said. There… There was something, some reason he shouldn't…

But that didn't make sense, his spark told him. He was made for this. He parted his lips, anticipation painting trails through his field as he awaited the kiss.

It never came.

He onlined his optics. Optimus was looking at him with pained longing visible as daylight on his face. “I can't,” he whispered.

Ratchet turned away, dropping his gaze to the ground as reality settled heavy back over him. “I know.”

“You…” He placed a servo on Ratchet's pauldron. His field was controlled again, and it would have been a companionable touch had the atmosphere not still been so charged between them. “You don't need to wait for me. You can still find happiness with another.”

Ratchet squeezed his optics shut as bitterness flared in his spark—at the Matrix, for stealing Optimus away from him; at the world, for all their expectations; and at Optimus, for being _so damn considerate_ about it all. As if seeing his pain didn't increase Ratchet's tenfold. As if he could simply replace him, just like that. Ratchet didn't want anyone else, some _consolation prize_. He wanted Optimus. He wanted Optimus to think of himself, _just once._

Why? _Why_ did they have to let these things come between them? _Frag it, why?_

Optimus withdrew his servo, a silent apology in his field, and all Ratchet's anger melted into sorrow.

To think what this mech had reduced him to. This stupid, beautiful, Pit-damned hypocritical self-sacrificing mech, that he couldn't stop loving if the Unmaker himself came to strike him down for it. He'd stay by his side forever, for all the misery it pained him with.

He knew Optimus loved him back, and there were times when that was almost enough. Times even when he could imagine they _were_ together, that the steady companionship and silent understanding that passed between them proved Optimus was still his.

Then moments like this reminded him that he could no more have Optimus than he could steal the moon from the sky.

He believed all the scrap about Primus and the Thirteen, and Ratchet was hard pressed to deny it when physical proof sat in Optimus's chest, entrapping his spark like a cage from the inside.

Optimus spoke often of freedom—the right of all sentient beings, as he'd said so many times. Yet he was not free. And he never complained, simply accepting the burden he was dealt with the resignation of one who knows martyrdom is his destiny.

The world thought him impassive, but whether it was a flicker in his field or the tiniest narrowing of his optics, Ratchet could read him easily as a datapad. His spark cried out for the life he couldn't have, and Ratchet shattered anew every time he heard it.

Primus was real and could be blasted to the Pit for all he revered him. Frag, he'd do it himself if he could. If he could win back Optimus's freedom that way, _their_ freedom to share their love instead of letting it burn at them from the inside, he would in a nanoklick.

But there was no point in thinking in what-ifs, or dreaming of the things they couldn't have. For now he'd just offer as much as Optimus was willing to accept, and take whatever he could still allow himself to give.

He found Optimus's servo and gave it a squeeze, lingering for a moment on the touch before withdrawing and looking up to watch the unfamiliar stars now twinkling above. “At least you're still here safe with me, old friend.”

 

* * *

 

Optimus stood on the edge of the Well of Allsparks, the sky turning pink behind him as he spoke words that froze the energon in Ratchet's tanks.

He'd merged the Allspark with the Matrix.

With his own spark.

He… he was…

No.

_No._

Optimus wouldn't meet his gaze. “My quest must be completed,” he said, voice holding a resolve that Ratchet knew served as much for the Prime to steel himself as convince everyone else. The expression he wore was one he'd seen on him all too often—the face of a mech who would meet his fate head on, looking it in the optic as it took him.

Ratchet protested, a helpless plea into the dark, though he knew anything he could say was pointless before the words even formed in his vocalizer.

It was all so unfair. They'd given so much— _Optimus_ had given so much. They'd ended the war, restored Cybertron… And now, after it was all over, he had to give his own life. Ratchet looked down at his servos, clenching them into fists. He'd saved countless lives over the vorns, and yet… yet... What was the point of it all when couldn't hold on to this one that mattered to him more than any other?

Optimus gave a sad smile, regret and sorrow hidden deep in his optics for only Ratchet to see. Rays of morning sunlight glinted off his helm like a halo as he turned away from him one final time.

He snapped open his wings and took off, rising into the sky. Time seemed to slow as he stopped his ascent, flipped around in midair, then dove down, down, down into the abyss that was the heart of Cybertron.

Sparks exploded out of the Well in his place, shooting upwards and out in all directions. They lit the sky like fireworks, shining in every color imaginable, and some he hadn't even known existed. It was life itself, and the most beautiful sight he'd ever seen.

His lips parted into a smile, but there was no room left for joy in him. He tasted the bitter prickle of tears on his glossa.

Optimus had left him again, and Primus was mocking him.

 

_Hey, that's no way to say goodbye._

**Author's Note:**

> Let me apologize for this with the reminder that Optimus canonically comes back to life _without_ the Matrix, so they'll eventually get their happy ending.


End file.
